Jennifer Cayley

Lanark ON
Email:Jennifer Cayley

The focus of my work as a teller has been on epic material as well as traditional folk and fairy tales.

Performance Highlights include:
• 13 years telling at Stories From the Ages, Ottawa’s weekly winter series devoted to epic telling. Material included selections from; The Odyssey, The Iliad, Orlando Furioso, The Kalevala, Morte d'Arthur and The Mahabharata.
• Co –hosting and telling at week-end gatherings of tellers from across Canada, brought together to tell the Odyssey, the Iliad, the Metamorphoses and the Mahabharata in their entirety.
• Six years at The Fourth Stage of Canada’s National Arts Centre as part of the Ottawa Storytellers monthly concert series.
• Storytelling festivals in Ottawa,Toronto, Eastern Townships.
• Fringe: National Storytelling Network’s in St.Louis, Missouri.
• Talk Story Festival, Honolulu 2008
• Southern Ontario Tour with Jan Andrews, Book of Spells, (weaving of literary and autobiographical material) winter 2009
• Touring Wales, with Jan Andrews, Book of Spells, (weaving of literary and autobiographical material) Spring 2009

Storytelling in schools
Storytelling in schools is an important part of my professional practice. I am on the artists in education roster of the Ontario Arts Council, a provincially funded program that subsidizes artists’ residencies in schools. As well I am on the roster of Prologue to the Performing Arts.

Voice and movement
I have a particular interest in voice and movement work as it impacts on storytelling and have had the pleasure of doing the National Voice intensive at the University of British Columbia as well as a five week intensive at the Roy Hart Centre in France. Jan Andrews and I offer workshops that incorporate this work and are designed to help tellers connect more deeply with their material.

As an arts administrator, I co-founded and led a successful arts education organization dedicated to supporting artists from all disciplines, including storytelling, to work in school and community settings. This organizational experience has been used to support storytelling at the local, provincial and national level. I have a strong interest in seeing the storytelling community build the infrastructure it needs to support the growth of the art form.

Nov 2008